At the same time, the state asked that the group’s lawsuit be dismissed.

U.S. District Court Judge Freda Wolfson, who spent much of the two-hour hearing sharply questioning the attorney for the counselors, said she did not plan to rule on the motions for at least two weeks. In August, Gov. Chris Christie signed into law a measure preventing licensed therapists, psychologists, social workers and counselors from trying to change minors’ sexual orientation.

Mathew Staver, who represents two New Jersey therapists, the Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality and the American Association of Christian Counselors, said the law violated his clients’ First Amendment rights by barring them from giving any direction to clients seeking to change their sexual orientation.

“Even if you can talk about but not counsel, the clients are not going to talk about it,” he said. “They’d be chilled because their licenses are in jeopardy.”

Staver said his clients were being placed in the conflicting position of following either the new law or their professional codes of ethics, and parents’ rights to help their children “"reduce or eliminate their unwanted same-sex attractions, behaviors or identity," according to the lawsuit filed in August.

Staver also argued that the law forces children who are seeking to change their sexual orientation to go to unlicensed therapists, resulting in “the very type of harm that the statute intends to prevent.”

Wolfson said Staver’s case would probably hinge on whether the law violated the First Amendment but that if it didn't, “it’s a much more lenient standard."

Wolfson did not pose many questions for the state's attorneys.

Before the hearing, Troy Stevenson, executive director of Garden State Equality, a gay rights organization that intervened on the state’s behalf, said conversion was a barbaric practice.

“They’re telling a young person that there’s something fundamentally wrong about their nature,” Stevenson said. “It leads to a life of self-hate and shame about who they know they are.”

A nearly identical law in California – the first state to ban the practice — was upheld on Aug. 29 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals , but Wolfson said she was “not bound by what the Ninth Circuit has done, though it’s something I’m looking at that can be persuasive.”